| | The media is intrinsic to our understanding of the
discourse on the “war on terror”. In these days of
postmodern critical analysis, the orthodoxy about
“objectivity” has long been eroded, but the deliberate
blurring of distinction between “fact” and propaganda,
reality and stereotype, and the discursive stringing
together of sensational events, finds a new level in news
media-mediated public discourse. The article critically
interrogates the rhetorical clustering of four mediatised
“events” – Madrid 3/11/2004, London 7/7/2005, Mumbai
11/7/2006 and 26/11/2008 – which raised the spectre
of an interconnected and endless “war on terror” as a
knee- jerk political and media response.
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